Tours in Barcelona

Barcelona is two cities on top of each other. The old one — the Gothic Quarter, El Born, El Raval — is medieval and dense, crossable on foot in half an hour, holding the cathedral, the Picasso Museum and the Boqueria market, with La Rambla running down the middle to the sea. Around it lies the Eixample, Ildefons Cerda's nineteenth-century grid with the corners cut off, and this is where Gaudi is: the Sagrada Familia, begun in 1882 and still unfinished; Casa Batllo and La Pedrera on Passeig de Gracia; Casa Vicens, his first house, further out. Park Guell sits on the hill above; the Palau de la Musica and Sant Pau add the other great modernista, Domenech i Montaner. Montjuic rises over the port with its castle, the Miro Foundation and its fountain; Tibidabo looks down from the other side; and Barceloneta beach starts a fifteen-minute walk from the Gothic Quarter, courtesy of the 1992 Olympics, which turned an industrial waterfront into sand.

Gaudi is what most people come for and what most tours are built around, with tickets attached, because the Sagrada Familia and Park Guell sell out. After that, food: markets and tapas in the afternoon, wine and vermouth in the evening, cooking classes for anyone wanting the trick at home. Bicycles suit the city better than most European capitals — it is flat where it matters and the seafront is continuous. The water is underused: sunset sailings, catamarans, a powerboat run for people in a hurry. And the days out are genuinely good: Montserrat, the monastery wedged into a serrated mountain an hour inland, reached by cogwheel train or cable car; the Penedes cava cellars beside it; the Costa Brava coves at Tossa de Mar; medieval Girona, with Figueres and the Dali museum beyond.

Practical. Book the Sagrada Familia and Park Guell before the flight; the ticket-inclusive tours exist mostly because people forget. The climate is kinder than most of Spain: mild damp winters around 15C, a hot sticky August, and a sea swimmable from June into October. From the airport the Aerobus takes about half an hour, the metro is slower and cheaper, a taxi around thirty-five euros; a ten-journey transport card costs a fraction of ten singles and is the first thing to buy. Eating is late and cheap by northern European standards: a set lunch around fifteen euros with wine, tapas from three or four a plate, dinner after nine. Tipping is coins and rounding. The one real nuisance is pickpocketing — La Rambla, the metro to the beach, the crowd outside the Sagrada Familia — and it happens to people who were certain it would not.